R U Mine Arctic Monkeys Video Analysis

The video starts with a shot of a radio presenter who is announcing that they are going to play the

song. This is straight away contrasting to the usually

conventions of a music video as we expect to see a lot of

shots of the band at the very start to help promote the

bands image. The radio station playing the song for the

very first time mimics the fact that it is the first time many

people will have heard the song and it straight away makes it sound like a hit by the way the presenter is describing it.

This next shot is a close up of the lead singer Alex

Turner as he puts the camera down in front of him.

The fact that Alex’s face is so prominent and is the

first face we see, apart from the presenter, shows

how dominant he is in the band and that he is the

star image of the band. It is also clear that all of the

shots are black and white which could be used to

symbolise the drab nature of the lyrics (“satisfaction

feels like a distant memory”).

This next shot is surprising in the fact that we can now see

another member of the band, Matt Helders the drummer,

however we cannot see the full faces of either band member.

This is strange because with this genre of music it is common

for everything to look very professional, and as the camera is

seemingly handheld and we cannot fully see the band

members, it does not look like a very professional music

video. Both Alex and Matt are miming the lyrics whilst driving

in the car which compares to most music videos and miming

is common in videos, however it is more apparent in this video that they are actually miming as they are listening to the song on the radio.

This next shot is Alex putting the camera in the back

seat of the car. Whilst he is doing this he is posing at

the camera which adds an element of “being with the

times” as selfies are common everywhere at the

moment and the way his arm is and how he is looking

at the camera almost looks like he is taking a selfie before he puts the camera down.

The next shot shows Alex looking at himself in the

mirror and combing back his hair. When we first

saw Alex we could tell that he looked after his

appearance and this is easy to spot now that he is

checking himself out. Before this Alex used to have

long hair and looked very different. With this song

the band changed their look completely by going for

a more slick and professional look and this is

represented in this shot.

In this shot Alex picks the camera back up and

continues to sing into the camera whilst

holding it up towards his face. This idea of him

taking a “selfie” is apparent again as it makes

him look very vain and like he thinks of himself

very highly. As I mentioned earlier it seems like

he is the star of the band as so far is the one

with the most coverage so far in the video.

Alex then turns the camera onto himself and Matt

again where we see them both singing into the

camera. It is similar to the last shot as it makes them

both look vain as they are looking into the camera

and singing very confidently. It would appear that

these are the two most popular members of the

band as so far they are the only two we have seen and there has been no mention of the other two yet.

In this shot we finally see another member of

the band and it is the bassist Nick Omalley. The

fact that he is sat in the backseat with two

attractive blond girls in the back highlights the

“rock and roll lifestyle” with lots of different

women. It seems now as though when Alex put

the camera in the backseat, he was actually

giving it to Nick. The reason that we did not

know he was giving the camera to someone

else could highlight the idea that Matt and Alex are the two most important members of the band.

This shot is the first time we Alex being associated with

the guitar even though he is only pretending and

playing the air guitar. Music videos of this genre usually

include a lot of full body shots of band members playing

their instrument and it is unusual that videos do not

have a lot of these shots. He even kicks the air in a

manner that rock and roll stars usually do when they

are performing on stage. This is helping give the arctic

monkeys a rock and roll to their video as this makes

Alex look like a typical guitarist as prior to this is was impossible to tell what role he actually played in the band.

This long shot of the band playing the

instruments is the first time we see them

actually playing instruments. It would be very

unusual if we did not see this at any point during

the video at all. The fact that the band now look

very professional and have things such as smoke

screens appearing over the instruments help

create a large atmosphere which is another

thing that has not been shown at any point throughout the video.

The video ends back where it started with

the radio presenter holding a thumbs up to

the camera. The song has already finished

however the narrative continues back to

where it started by finishing off with the

same radio presenter which indicates that

the whole way through the song we have

been listening to the song on the radio and

now that we see the presenter again it indicates that the song is now over.